Skip to main content
ARS Home » Northeast Area » Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania » Eastern Regional Research Center » Sustainable Biofuels and Co-products Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #271300
Title: Compositional equivalence of barleys differing only in low and normal phytate levels

Author
item Moreau, Robert
item Bregitzer, Paul
item Liu, Keshun
item Hicks, Kevin

Submitted to: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/9/2012
Publication Date: 7/4/2012
Citation: Moreau, R.A., Bregitzer, P.P., Liu, K., Hicks, K.B. 2012. Compositional equivalence of barleys differing only in low and normal phytate levels. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 60:6493-6498.

Interpretive Summary: Phytate is a phosphorous-containing natural compound that occurs in many plant materials, especially grains. Phytate is not digested by humans or nonruminant animals. Moreover, phytate is sometimes considered to be an antinutrient because it interferes with the absorbtion of certain important minor minerals such as zinc, iron, calcium and magnesium. For these reasons, two strategies have been undertaken to deal with problems associated with phytate. One strategy has been to add an enzyme, phytase, to animal feeds to break down the phytate and make its phosphorous available to the animal. The second strategy has been to breed new cultivars of plants that have low levels of phytate, such as the new types of barley that were compared in this study. With these new types of barley becoming available, there is a need to know how the breeding strategies that were used to reduce the levels of phytate have impacted other nutrients such as starch, protein, tocotrienols and other phytonutrients. The results of this study indicate that phytate content had little effect on the 24 other nutrients compared in this study. However, several of these new types of barley compared in this studey were found to have exceptionally high levels of valuable nutrients such as starch, beta glucans, protein, and tocotrienols, and knowledge of these attributes may help nutritionists and food scientists to maximize their value.

Technical Abstract: Recent breeding advances have led to the development of several barley lines with reduced levels of phytate. One of them was further developed and released as a hulless low phytate cultivar (Clearwater). Because barley oil contains high levels of tocotrienols and other functional lipids, we conducted a study to compare levels of tocopherols and tocotrienols, fatty acid composition, and general nutrients of five low phytate genotypes and five related cultivars having normal phytate contents. Seed samples were collected from three growing locations. Results showed that both genotype and location had significant effects (p < 0.05) on most attributes. However, correlation between a nutrient level and phytate level was rather week (r square ranged from 0.000 to 0.293), indicating that the phytate level had an insignificant effect on all other attributes. When genotypes were grouped into hulled and hulless, for many nutrients, the hulless had higher levels than the hulled type.